Mown meadow

The meadow over the brow of the hill has been mown, the grass cut for hay, I guess.. A machine with a clattering sound that sounds like a rapidly approaching monster cut it last week. Now the cut meadow is orange, and the grazing cows can just be seen, in this case lying down because it's been raining a lot and is about to rain again! This scene was shot through glass, because I'd been trying to snap a moth on the window. It flew away.

The rain had alaready started when I first woke, and continued until half past ten or beyond. I had been expecting the heatwave to continue, but decided it was a good day to listen to my new audiobook ( A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler) and to have another try at a 1, 000 piece jigsaw that I bought when I had flu, then found far too difficult!

But first, I tried the honey and sunflower loaf I'd baked the night before. It was too late to try last night, so I cut a couple of slices and tried it untoasted, and toasted, and with butter and with spreads.... I think this might just be THE gluten-free pan loaf I've been trying to make for over a year! It doesn't fall apart when sliced. and the crust is crispy but still cut-able. It has a few seeds but not too many, and can be eaten with honey, Hummus OR marmite. A minor triumph in my attempts at baking.

That was my day, pretty much. CleanSteve went out to look at an old textile mill that was having a rare open day, but I was happy just to stay at home, out of the rain, watching the weather fronts come and go across the meadow. The jigsaw which has four sides that need to be rotated, proved easier and more satisfying now that I am in good health.

Likewise the audiobook: the latest Anne Tyler, the only one I've not read or listened to at least once. The familiar themes are there: ageing: immigration; obsessional men; kooky, homely women; innocence, family and 'specialness', and Baltimore. My favourite of her twenty novels or so has to be Digging to America, a novel about two families who meet at the airport, each on their way to collect the Korean baby girl child they have adopted. From this accidental meeting, they become friends and have regular reunions. One of the families is made up of white Americans from Baltimore, and the other is Iranian immigrant couple, Compare and contrast their lives, and those of their adopted daughters.